‘Fury Road’ is the Perfect Drive (Film Review)

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First things first, just so that I am absolutely clear: Mad Max: Fury Road is a work of unmitigated genius, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. It’s rare these days for a film of any sort to transcend the limitations of its genre to become a work of art. Rarer, still, for an action movie. That, however, is exactly what Fury Road does. In the process, it leaves Michael Bay, Marvel, and anyone else who thinks they can make an action movie so far in its dust that comparing it to anything else is not only unfair, it’s comical. Fury Road is on an entirely different level, in a league entirely its own.

It’s a masterwork of a master artist working at the top of his game. It’s “The Mona Lisa,” the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the Ulysses of post-apocalyptic action-adventure thrill rides that will leave you breathlessly in awe as you attempt to pry your jaw from the floor.

Go see this movie. Go see this movie. Go. See. This. Movie.

In the three decades since Max Rockatansky last saw the silver screen in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, the world of filmmaking underwent a sea change. Special effects became the realm of the computer programmer, opening up worlds of imagination previously unknown to filmmakers and creating almost limitless possibilities. We live in an era where giant, shapeshifting alien robots fall routinely from the sky, leaving a trail of devastating destruction in their wake. Buildings and cities are little more than fodder for the trash heap in movies today, as towering monuments to man’s ingenuity are crumbled to dust thanks to the bad guy’s plans or—as is increasingly the case—the raw power of the hero. None of this is possible without the computer, whose prevalence and importance to modern cinema cannot be overstated.

The problem with this is that the action movie of today is little more than a cartoon. Even the best made Marvel film suffers from this aesthetic. No matter how cool Iron Man may look while throwing that nuclear warhead into a wormhole to another dimension, there’s never any doubt that you’re looking at anything but a rendered hero moving about in a rendered environment. The danger, the urgency, the humanity is lost entirely in the whirlwind of computer generated visuals, giving rise to the common criticism that movies today just ain’t what they used to be, man.

Writer/director/creator/living legend George Miller turns modern conventions upside down with his latest offering, reminding the world that bigger and better doesn’t always have to refer to processing power and software. Using mostly practical effects and real stuntmen, Miller shows us all that the size of your CPU pales in comparison to the scope of your vision. And damn, if his vision isn’t out of this world.

Taking a plot that’s simple to the point of near non-existence—Max (Tom Hardy, in a role popularized by Mel Gibson) falls prey to the minions of evil warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played Toecutter in the original Mad Max) and finds himself accidentally in the position to help Joe’s wives/sex slaves escape from his tyrannical grasp, leading to a two hour chase scene through the post-apocalyptic deserts of Australia—Miller creates a work of stunning visual beauty that positively towers over anything released in at least the last decade.

The reason, of course, is that no matter how chaotic or absurd Fury Road manages to get—and, believe me, it manages to pack in the chaos and absurdity—it remains grounded by the tangibility of its effects. It would have been beyond easy to create the look of Immortan Joe—with this frail body, wrecked by bulbous tumors, hidden behind a frightening mask and suit of armor—on a computer. But no; he’s there, on screen, in the flesh and alive. His look is real, a state seemingly achievable by an actual person in this world. This makes his presence all the more terrifying and the danger he poses all the more present.

This is, in a way, a metaphor for the entire film. Max and his gang of escaped concubines aren’t running away from a digitized army, such as the ones seen in The Hobbit. They’re running from an actual horde of bloodthirsty warriors driving a battalion of actual hot rods that appear to have been designed in the actual darkest pits of Hell.

Hardy, for his part, fills his role with the kind of nuance we’ve come to expect of an actor of his caliber. He’s reverent to Gibson without resorting to imitation, and brings just the right level of hardness and insanity to the character to make him work. Charlize Theron also wows as Imperator Furiosa, the treasonous minion of Immortan Joe who instigates the defection of those long suffering concubines. She is in all ways Max’s equal in terms of ass kicking heroics and is, in many ways, the true focus and hero of Fury Road. Not to downplay the role of Max—his name, after all, is right there in the title—but his involvement is, for the most part, entirely incidental.

Which may sound a little odd, but it works perfectly for Miller’s hellish vision. Max, a true cowboy, is the sort of hero who does his heroics based on a code of right and wrong, no matter what he might tell you. The team up may start as a result of a common enemy, but over the course of movie becomes a symbol of the stand against evil. Neither Max nor Furiosa particularly need the other for their survival, it just works out better that way for all involved.

Simply put, Mad Max: Fury Road is an absolute masterpiece of filmmaking. A game-changer in every sense of the word, it serves as a reminder of the heights a movie can achieve with a little bit of vision and a whole hell of a lot of creativity. They may not make movies the way they used to, but if Fury Road does nothing else, it proves it’s at least still possible. In fact, it might prove worthy to forget entirely about the way things used to be and, instead, wonder why they don’t make them like Fury Road. Hollywood, take note: A gauntlet has been thrown.

Mad Max: Fury Road is in theaters now.